


in another world we never met

by crashkeys (Tempo)



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, No Idea, No idea what I'm doing, Post-Canon, kinda ?, kinda ???, this is my first shit i'm uploading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempo/pseuds/crashkeys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“See you in hell,” Aoi Kurashiki spat, throwing one last glare at the empty shell of a man before him before slamming the trunk shut with a staggering, overwhelming sense of finality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in another world we never met

**Author's Note:**

> i've never published a fanfiction before. incredible
> 
> major 999 true ending spoilers follow

  The sand dunes reminded him sickeningly of ocean crests, except frozen in time, solid, unmoving, and in order to avoid the images of a ship slipping beneath the waves and a familiar nausea forming in his gut Aoi instead focused on the girl beside him.

  A golden pistol laid near the scene, tossed almost lazily aside. It wasn't like they needed it anymore. Ace-- no, Gentarou Hongou, he’d call him by his name even if it made him sick-- gave no resistance as his sister tied him up, staring into the distance almost defeatedly, vacantly. Not once did he find it within himself to even bring his eyes to the gun. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it. It was just within arm’s reach should he have been able to _move_ his arms, but Akane was presently occupying herself with binding them as tightly to his body as she could manage with such a thin rope. Hongou was practically powerless without a gun, without a company or hostage or any type of authority to exert. Fitting, he finally had the tables turned on him.

  Aoi couldn’t feel sorry for him if he tried.

  Akane duct-taped his mouth shut last, maybe to give him the opportunity to throw out any last remarks, but there were none, and Akane didn’t seem to care either way. It took their strength combined to hoist him up into the trunk of the SUV, and the dead weight in his arms reminded Aoi of just days before, when they were first gathering the nine players. Pawns. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Their endeavor was silent, and once they were done, they took a step back to admire their handiwork, as if inspecting a product to be shipped out, because that was practically all it was, wasn’t it?

  “He sure won’t be talking for a while,” Aoi said, and only a split second later did he realize that they were the first words they had spoken to each other. “They” meaning Aoi and Akane Kurashiki, the tragic siblings, not the personas they had adopted during those nine hours-- Santa and June, complete strangers, just another two people thrust into an unfortunate situation. Not the perpetrators.

  “That’s the idea,” Akane replied after a second of hesitation, the sickly-sweet tone missing from her voice. It felt unfamiliar to Aoi after so long as June. “Listen, I’ll get our car packed up. Make sure this one has all the supplies I left still, okay? I forgot to double-check earlier,” she continued, then took off promptly to Aoi’s right, not even giving him an opening to respond. She headed to the car where they’d make their getaway. It was less shitty than the SUV, but not much of a step up. She probably didn’t want to stay around Hongou. Aoi understood, probably more than anyone else in that building. Even still, something about her words didn’t quite settle with him right, and he supposed that maybe bits and pieces of June still lingered in her like a wrong answer that hadn't been erased all the way.

  Or maybe it was just in Akane’s nature to form her words _just so_ after a lifetime of tiptoeing around the truth, around her doomed fate and remarkably abnormal excuse of a life. He used to always have a sense of when she was lying (she used to rock on her heels when she was a kid, fingers stacked behind her back as she lied straight though her teeth), but as of late, it seemed even that had faded, and she was just as much of an enigma to him as she was to the standard bypasser. But the two still hadn’t addressed anything-- it sure as hell seemed as if they were ignoring the elephant in the room. Or maybe they weren’t, just approaching it in their own way; did he honestly expect Akane to sit down and have a chit-chat with him over tea about what just transpired? It was too early, of course. Hell, they had just gotten out of the building. Maybe they’d _never_ have to talk about it, just going about the lives they were supposed to lead before he interfered.

  Aoi’s hands found their way into his pockets (a habit Akane once pointed out, right when they arrived at Building Q for the first time, in fact) as he surveyed the man in front of him.

 _You’re the reason any of this is happening,_ he wanted to say. _Maybe if you hadn’t gone and decided to kidnap eighteen kids, we’d be all fine and dandy right now. Including you, because, you know, you murdered three of your friends._

  What Aoi didn’t add in his mental spiel was that he had been manipulated to do so. Why bother? After all, the guy had made the _decision_ to kill. They gave him the weapon, the victim, the motive, but he was the one who went through with it. So what if it was his colleagues he offed? The only other possible victims were Light Field in the case of Nagisa Nijisaki and God knows whom else for Kagechika Musashidou and Teruaki Kubota, and Aoi didn’t want to consider either of those two possibilities. That’s what Aoi always told himself, anyway, illogical as it was. Blaming Hongou was always easiest, if he wasn’t blaming himself.

  Aoi didn’t like maybes or what-ifs, but with everything he and Akane had been through, it was hard to not entertain them every once in a while. If Hongou hadn’t done what he had, where would they all be now? Light and Clover Field, Nona and Ennea Kashiwabara, twelve more names and faces he had all but memorized, but with the horrors of nine years ago absent. They’d be happier, probably. Sure as hell not as traumatized. After that came the face of a twelve-year-old, innocent, jubilant; hell, the kid still believed in _Santa_ , as ironic as it was. That part of Akane had died in the incinerator, no matter the timeline. Her innocence had been ripped from her, and no semblance of it remained. All that was left was a ticking timebomb that had been deactivated at nine seconds to zero.

  And it was _his_ fault.

  Suddenly unwilling to be tainted by Hongou’s presence any longer, Aoi gave a halfhearted glance around at the boxes of supplies left in the car. Akane had insisted they leave some behind for the five when they escaped, because they were in the middle of the desert and if something were to happen, the human body could only last so long in intense heat. She’d know. But Aoi couldn’t find it within himself to care if Hongou died out here; admitting his sins was preferable, and it didn’t seem as if he was far from it in his current state, but it was hard to care about the life of someone who had ruined so many.

  “See you in hell,” Aoi Kurashiki spat, throwing one last glare at the empty shell of a man before him before slamming the trunk shut with a staggering, overwhelming sense of finality.

  Akane was waiting in the passenger seat when he opened the car door, and when she asked if he had completed his task, he responded with an absent nod. The key was already in the ignition, so he put the car in drive and slammed down on the gas pedal with a new energy he would have never guessed he had within him.

  They were criminals now, they were on the run, and they’d be being chased in less than nine minutes, but for the first time in a lifetime, they were free.

 

~◆~

 

  He rereads the letter for the ninth time.

 

  It doesn’t get any longer, any less terse and rehearsed and robotic, but the words define the edges of the new hollow within his heart and if he doesn’t focus on something he’ll _think_ , and if he thinks then he’ll realize that she’s actually gone and he’s not just imagining the empty motel bed and missing suitcase.

 

_Aoi,_

_I’m sorry it has to be like this. What I’m doing is for everyone’s sake, including yours, and that means I have to leave. Please, please stay safe, and don’t come looking for me, or all of this will have been for nothing._

_You made my life normal for a while, or as close to it as it can get, and that’s the best I could ever ask for. Thank you so much for that, Aoi. I don’t know what I did to deserve a brother like you._

_Good luck, hope to see you again._

_Akane_

  
  
  He never sees her again.


End file.
